The present invention relates to a technique in which a structure for hosting environments to be provided to a client is changed according to needs of the client.
An online system on Internet and a batch processing system of an IT system in a company are configured by a plurality of application programs operated on a plurality of computer resources connected to a network. Some of these application programs are run directly on the computer resources. However, others are interpreted and run on middleware including an interpreter called an “application server”.
In this manner, application systems are divided into an application program that is operating and an environment on which an application program operates. Herein, the environment on which the application program operates, that is, a system configured by a computer resource or a program resource such as an application server is called a “hosting environment”.
This hosting environment is a network distributing system as mentioned above, and the larger a system in size gets, the higher the costs for system maintenance management become. Accordingly, a configuration and maintenance management of this hosting environment are generally outsourced. This outsourcing is entrusted to a service company called a data center or service provider. As kinds of the hosting environments, there are a web server environment for configuring a company homepage and a mail server function, and the data center determines its services to be provided according to the needs of clients who use the hosting environment.
Further, from the viewpoint of reduction of a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), attention has been recently attracted to effective use of the computer resource of the IT system in the company. Therefore, also in the IT system of the company, it has been necessary to share therewith the hosting environment on which an application program such as a salary calculation butch processing program is operated. An IT system management department of the company must determine the hosting environment provided as a department so as to be optimized for the IT system in the company.
As mentioned above, the data center or IT system management department in the company has the problem of having to properly determine the configuration of the hosting environment provided. For example, in the data center, it is required to analyze needs of the client with respect to the hosting environment and, on the basis of the analysis result, to introduce a system resource configuring a hosting system effectively with minimum investment. At this time, the introduction must be carried out within a range of the management policy or budget restriction of the company itself.
Similarly, also in the IT system management department of the company, it is required to introduce a system resource so as to meet the hosting environment needs for a group of application programs in the company. At this time, the management policy or budget restriction of the company itself must be taken into consideration. Thus, determination of a resource configuration under a certain kind of restriction conditions is generally called “resource planning”.
As the technique for this kind of resource planning, there has been known a technique for acquiring demand-condition information and supply-condition information of the resource at a resource-supply destination and for assisting plans of distribution of the resource (Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 11-353358).
In addition, there has been known another technique for: collecting conditions of using a resource of a business processing program per business; and conducting resource analysis for improvement of the resource distribution and performance improvement per business (Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2002-278780).